In the twenty-third year of the Republic of China, Qingxi Town, a water town in the south of the Yangtze River, was surrounded by water and became a mysterious island isolated from the world. The incomplete stone tablet in the temple on the outskirts of the town is taboo in the town. The rumor that "the god of the tablet demanded his life" has been circulated for hundreds of years and became a tool for the squire Zhao Heting to control the land, water sources and people's hearts.
Shen Yanzhi, a former investigative reporter in the provincial capital, resigned because his sister Shen Qinghe mysteriously disappeared five years ago and he was framed, so he returned to his hometown with obsession. As soon as he stepped into Qingxi, he came across a murder case in a wild temple. The silver bracelet exposed in the coffin was exactly the same as the one his sister was wearing when she disappeared. Strange stone tablet fragments also appeared on his body inexplicably.
There are no ghosts in the town, but there are ghosts in everyone's heart. Zhao Heting used folk customs as a guise, colluded with county officials, bribed villagers, used hallucinogenic herbs and man-made tricks to create the illusion of "evil spirits", concealed the human life transportation line that had been running underground for many years, and even hid the truth about the massacre of a family a hundred years ago. Shen Yanzhi followed clues such as silver bracelets, slips of paper, and code words tied with paper, and teamed up with sober people such as Zhou Baisheng, an old Chinese medicine doctor, and Li Chongshan, a down-and-out police officer, to solve the problem step by step amid true and false clues, betrayal of allies, and swaying of villagers.
Step by step, he dismantles the lies in the legend of the Monument God and uncovers the dark transactions under the ruined monument. He not only wants to find the whereabouts of his sister, but also pulls the lives and truth swallowed up by lies back into the sunshine, completes self-salvation in the game of human nature, and allows the injustice to be vindicated.
